


Lethologica Chronica

by tunteeton



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Accidental Flatmates, Amazing How Fire Exposes Our Priorities, Canon Compliant - Series 1, Developing Relationship, Emotionally Repressed Sherlock, Emotionally Vulnerable Sherlock, Even Near Swimming Pools, First Meeting, Forgetting Words, Magical Realism, Mycroft Meddles, On the Tip of My Tongue, Pre-Johnlock If You Want It to Be, Sherlock Reconnects With His Feels, Undiscussed Mental Issues, hints of angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-16
Updated: 2014-06-16
Packaged: 2018-02-04 22:48:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1796056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tunteeton/pseuds/tunteeton
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lethologica: Inability to articulate a thought due to forgetting a key word.</p><p>Sherlock has a small leather notebook in which he keeps his lost words. The list keeps on growing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lethologica Chronica

**Author's Note:**

> This is a retro-fic centered around the series 1, and won't make much sense without knowledge about it. My deepest gratitude to the sweet [BlushingNewb](http://archiveofourown.org/users/BlushingNewb/pseuds/BlushingNewb) for the speedy beta. You're all kinds of lovely things!

Sherlock first understands that he has a problem when he's sitting in – Lestrade's – office, gulping air like a stupid fish, unable to remember. It's on the tip of his tongue, of course, the feeling as familiar and frustrating as ever. But this is different, this is a name. You don't lose names. Not unless there's something more involved.

And that it had to be this name, too. The only name he'd actually care to know, the name that opens him the doors he cannot manage alone. Forgetting Sally's, or Sebastian's, or _yes please_ , Mycroft's, would be almost a relief, would be a cause for celebration. This one, not so much.

G. G something.

Lestrade cocks his head, impatiently. He hasn't been sleeping – not at home anyway – the wife is giving up on him, even the promotion hasn't made her any more forgiving. He's as plain, boring and placid as always. Sherlock hates him just then, hates the lines around his eyes, his prematurely greying hair and his stupid name which probably starts with G.

“Well?”

He snaps his hanging mouth shut, forces his concentration back to the case. Seeing is easy, observing automatic. Finding the evidence for these blind cohorts sometimes takes time and effort. But all that's finished now, it's time for the explanations, and he can do that without the missing name, too. It's Lestrade, after all. His last name is Lestrade. He probably won't even notice.

“So it couldn't have been the uncle,” he forces out. “Obviously then it's the brother. Send Anderson to his other club, even he can't miss the marks there. Tell him to start in the kitchen.” He gets up, grasps his scarf and the coat and turns to escape from the room. Sally gives him a long, distrustful look, but Lestrade shouts after him.

“Sherlock! You all right?”

“Yes, yes fine,” he mumbles, throwing the door closed. It's marginally easier to breathe in the corridor. He takes a random turn, steps into a convenient lift and pushes a button haphazardly. Up. The lift seems to be going up. No matter.

A name. A bloody name. What's next, chemical elements or something directly related to the Work? Oh please let him remember London. Losing London would be a catastrophe. He'd be a cripple, then, useless as well as unwanted.

Forgetting the sky-colour was difficult enough. It had taken him by surprise when it had happened, in the middle of an experiment, but at least he'd been alone then. No one had witnessed that disgrace, unlike this one. No one needed to know. He could already imagine the faces, some of them filled with pity, but most with horror or disgust. You don't forget names. You just don't.

He's on the roof, his mutinous feet taking him there without a conscious decision, and it's a beautiful, sunny day. Not a cloud to be seen. Sherlock stares at the sky and searches for the word. Sometimes, they come back. Sometimes, it pays to keep on trying. Or at least that's what people keep on insisting.

He hasn't ever regained any of the lost ones. He keeps a list at home, even though it's utterly useless business. The words skip away as soon as he stops reading them. His tongue sticks to his dry palate and the sounds disappear from his memory. It's infuriating.

“Sherlock?”

“G-,” he starts automatically, but it's useless. The word is gone. It's not coming back. He might as well give up.

“Lestrade,” he corrects himself, resigned. “What more do you need? Even your team should be able to work it out by now.”

Lestrade comes to stand next to him, admires the view for a moment.

“So it's true, then,” he says after a moment. “Sally caught it too, you know. Threw a right fit over it. You lost my name, just like that.”

What could he say which wouldn't be utterly obvious? He shrugs. “It happens.”

Lestrade gives up on the pretence of being interested in the surrounding buildings and turns to stare at him.

“It doesn't just happen, Sherlock!” He snaps. “Not with names! How long has this been going on, then? How many others? Are you back on drugs?”

“I'm clean!” He doesn't mean to shout, doesn't mean to surrender so easily, but this is jarring, demands thinking and solitude and Lestrade is too loud even when he's not in an interrogation mode. “I'm clean! I even quit smoking, unlike some other people here. Leave it. Go back to your trained monkeys.”

“Fine,” Lestrade mutters, casting him a dark look. “But I'll keep an eye on you. And the name's Greg.”

“Greg,” Sherlock repeats, softly, but the word is gone as soon as his throat constricts around it.

–

It's on his phone. Greg Lestrade, the letters bold as day, followed by the number. He traces it to his little notebook, painstakingly, letter by letter, using red ink. His first lost name. Oh please let it be the only one, ever, that he has to write to these pages.

He bought the leather bound book when he was ten. It's unusual to start forgetting so young, but Sherlock's never been conventional. The first word, the one that launched his little tour to child psychiatrists around Britain, is written on the left corner of the first page. It's so long gone that he's lost the meaning as well as the sound. He traces it with his fingertips, tries it out aloud, but nothing stirs in his memory. He wonders, not for the first time, what it means. To him, it's just a string of letters. Nothing important, probably. Not knowing it hasn't changed anything in his life. Of course, he could check it out if he wanted to, but why bother? It's meaningless to him anyway. It's just dead space. Just like everything else on these pages.

He refuses to count the individual words buried into the notebook, but he knows that they're spread over four pages, one word on each line, dated, his letters growing more stable and then haphazard again, a silent testimony to the storms of his early adult years.

Lestrade's name – _Greg_ , it's right there, he mouths the word once again – is the third one this month. It's escalating.

It shouldn't be escalating.

He puts the little notebook away, very carefully, and with equal care, he cradles his violin.

It's a habit of his to play Tartini for each of his lost words. Lestrade deserves a sonata at least.

–

There's another list of words, this one kept only in his mind palace. All the words he wouldn't mind forgetting, all the words that have been used to hurt, to ridicule, to belittle him. And those other kind of words, too, those to do with sentiment. Words he has used to hurt himself before he knew better. He really wouldn't mind losing those as well.

Freak.

Show-off.

Idiot.

Love.

Alone.

He hasn't forgotten a single item from that list.

–

The next loss makes him viciously glad. He pushes through the transition easily, doesn't even stop for breath, doesn't lose the thread of his deductions, or insults, as it may stand.

“Sally and Anderson,” he sneers, and feels like the king of the world.

Later, at home, he doesn't add that name to his notebook. Good riddance, he thinks, and plays a nasty little piece of Paganini instead.

–

Keeping the recent developments a secret from Mycroft is, naturally, an exercise in futility. He returns home from a longish case, a week after becoming blessedly detached from any personal information about one P. Anderson, to find his brother sitting primly beside the kitchen table.

“Evening, Sherlock,” Mycroft says, his voice void of any kind of inflection.

“Ignore it and it will go away,” Sherlock mutters to himself, but of course getting rid of Mycroft is never that easy. The bloody man will stick around until he has made his point, bathing in his own superiority, casting pitying glances at those less fortunate than himself – that is, everybody. Including the bloody King of England, most probably.

He bets Mycroft still has every single one of his words intact.

“You're two months behind in your rent,” his brother points out after an unmeasured amount of time has torturously glided past. Sherlock snorts. It's not like Mycroft to make such idiotic, obvious remarks. He must be losing his touch.

“And you've gained weight again,” he retorts sullenly. Really, why can't Mycroft just get to the point?

_You're losing names, Sherlock._

_Show me your arms, Sherlock._

_This is getting serious, Sherlock._

“Your landlord is getting impatient,” Mycroft says instead, inspecting the old stacks of newspapers and take-away containers on the table.

“I'm clean!” Sherlock shouts and is surprised to hear the anger in his own voice. Is that what it sounds like? He had forgotten what it even felt like.

“That's good to hear,” Mycroft hums, not raising his gaze from the rubbish littering the old table. “I'd give it two weeks before he evicts you. Shouldn't you do something about that?”

Sherlock does. He locates the violin from his little, shoddy bedroom and proceeds to find how terribly he can torture the strings without actually murdering them.

“If you keep that up I might to re-evaluate my estimation. There's a place in central London, however. You might recognise the name of the landlady. Of course, you'd need a flatmate to meet her prices. Think about it, Sherlock.”

_You can't be trusted to live alone anymore, Sherlock._

_I need to keep a closer eye on you, Sherlock._

_It's this or legal custody, Sherlock. You know I'm able._

“I couldn't afford central London even with King Midas as a flatmate,” Sherlock mutters rebelliously.

“Just think about it.”

–

Mycroft's estimates are never wrong. Of course they aren't. His brother is mentally incapable of being anything less than utterly perfect.

Sherlock has started the fifth page of the little notebook. Knowledge of astronomy is overrated anyway. There's a small star made of hydrogen and helium hovering somewhere nearby, and that's enough for him. His post waits on the table, almost buried under the newspapers.

He stares at the official note printed on the cheap, white paper and then around, at his lodgings.

The neighbours complain, the note points out. The rent remains unpaid, it continues. The landlord has had enough, it concludes.

He's never considered Montague Street a home. It's a place where he returns to recuperate when he's kicked off Scotland Yard or Molly's not working. He spends more time in Barts than he does here. He's not going to miss it.

But where on earth is he going to go, now?

–

He spends the next day complaining to Molly. She blushes and flutters and finally tells him he could come and live with her. She's got a spare bedroom. It wouldn't be any trouble at all. He isn't allergic to cats, is he?

He escapes to the cafeteria where he spots Mike Stamford, the only doctor in residence who, thus far, hasn't kicked him off the grounds. Mike's being harassed by a horde of skittish students, who quickly give up when Sherlock elbows his way through them.

“Thanks for that,” Mike says, and Sherlock gives him a grimace he hopes passes for a smile.

“So what's going on in the crime-solving front?”

“I've been following these serial suicides,” Sherlock answers, “and there are a couple of smaller cases. Nothing much. Nothing interesting in any rate. What about yourself?”

Mike hums thoughtfully.

“It's been a bit crazy since Doctor Drew went and had his heart attack. Did you know him? He worked here, left me with all of his students. A friend of Molly's, he used to be.”

Oh.

That one. He's got plans for that one.

“No, I'm afraid I haven't met him,” Sherlock answers carefully. Not yet, anyway. No need to tell Mike _that_. Even though the good doctor did donate his body to his alma mater, and in so doing, might still save a man from an unjust prison sentence.

Mike nods thoughtfully.

“So I've had my plate quite full, as you can see,” he muses and then cheers up, smiles and pats his shirt. “As you can see, being the most observant person in London and so on.”

Sherlock can't help an answering smile escaping. “In fact I do have a problem,” he blurts out and then bites his lower lip. Where did that come from? His troubles are his own, not to be shared with the likes of Mike Stamford.

“Oh? Care to share? Only you know me, a pathological do-gooder. Can't help it.”

Sherlock shrugs, tries to play it down. Mycroft's words come to his rescue. “It's nothing. I'm looking for a new flat at the moment. There's one in central London, but I'd need a flatmate. You see the problem?”

“Aye,” Mike smiles, and his eyes are of that colour that Sherlock doesn't know anymore. It all becomes too intimate, too suffocating, and he makes his excuses, heads back downstairs. It's high time to get back to Work, to forget all these nauseating feelings. The Work is important, is all that matters.

He hopes he could forget people like Mike existed. It's easier to dwell in the greyness.

–

It's rather difficult to go on forgetting Mike if he won't leave Sherlock in peace. The man barges in while Sherlock's waiting for Molly to confirm the results from the Drew experiment, with another doctor following after him.

No, not a doctor.

Or well, yes, a doctor, but an army doctor.

Obvious. The damn flatshare. Why did he have to go and open his mouth in the wrong company? Mike warned him, told him he'd want to help. A do-gooder, really. Stupid, stupid Sherlock. Go away, Mike. Stop trying to help. You're not wanted here.

And to top it off that other one seems to be just as indisposed to be in this situation as he himself is. His shoulders are carried tensely, he's short-spoken and withdrawn. This would be ridiculous if it wasn't happening to him. So Sherlock indulges, lets the floodgates open, shows Mike what happens when he treads on a ground where nobody wants him.

He expects John Watson to be out of the door in two minutes flat.

Instead he sees something like amazement flash in those eyes he can't put a colour to, and Mike's smiling jovially, and when did he lose the track of the day so completely?

He needs to get away from here.

It doesn't dawn to him that he went and promised to meet John Watson in Baker Street before he's half-way back to Montague.

That's inconvenient. Baker Street is further away from Barts than his old haunt.

Somehow, Mycroft is to be blamed for this.

–

John Watson is a curious case. It doesn't take Sherlock long to deduce that he, too, is carrying around his fair share of losses. It's in the sudden bursts of anger, in the quiet, contemplative moods, in the recurring nightmares which wake them both up way too often. And yet John looks at him with nothing but astonishment and slowly growing fondness, his eyes going soft and misty every time Sherlock's not just amazing, but human. It almost negates the fact that Sherlock has lost the name of their landlady and the taste of the red peppers since they met.

And now Sherlock has a third list of words, the one he'd deny having in the face of any horror imaginable.

It's, of course, the list of John's forgotten words. The ones he has been able to deduce, anyway. Even Sherlock Holmes isn't suicidal enough to just ask about them, to happily dance into that minefield of past traumas, mistakes and regrets.

“I hate those birds, the London birds,” John reveals one evening during a BBC newscast.

“Crows,” Sherlock mumbles, his eyes on the microscope, and John nods vehemently.

“Crows,” he repeats, and Sherlock can hear the longing, the unwillingness to let the word disappear. 

He adds an item to the evergrowing list number three. John is fast catching up with him.

Sherlock wonders how John forgot the crows.

Sherlock wonders if John has lost any names.

Sherlock wonders why he wonders.

–

So yes, John is a curious one. John yells at him and Sherlock loses three adjectives just like that. John praises him and he regains the word for friend. Almost falls over in surprise when the word enters his mind, strong and defined, like it had never left.

Sherlock has been living without _friend_ since he was seventeen and two months into university.

He puts this newly-reacquired knowledge into a good use the very next day when they meet Sebastian, another relic from his university days. It feels weirdly appropriate.

“This is my _friend_ , John Watson,” he says, savouring the taste and shape of the word in his mouth.

Sebastian, however, looks less than impressed.

“Friend?” He asks, casting a disbelieving glance from one of them to the other.

“Colleague,” John hastens to correct.

Sherlock sits silently, his back straight. Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. Only the Work is important.

–

The stars shine impossibly brightly that night, even on London sky, as they walk side by side towards the Vauxhall Arches. John is annoyed with him, but not more so than usual. All in all, it's a pretty normal night on a case, or it would be if the shadow of Moriarty didn't hang over them so thickly. But right now everything is calm, and Sherlock feels almost relaxed, almost – content. It's like he and the world are at peace with each other.

He can't remember a weirder feeling.

By chance he happens to glance up, and for a moment he sees not hydrogen and helium and spare bits of other chemical elements, but serene beauty. The shock of it makes him dumb, makes him open his traitorous mouth.

“Beautiful, isn't it?”

John follows his gaze, and Sherlock looks at him just in time to witness that softening of eyes which always makes him feel sad for some reason.

“I thought you didn't care about things like that.”

He doesn't, not really. The calm blanket of the night and John's solid presence must be affecting him more than he should allow them to. He must be on guard, then. He must remember the second list. 

–

John's eyes are huge and serious and _blue_ , they are _blue_ , they are the deepest _blue_ Sherlock has ever seen, and it's such a shame, because he's going to blow them both up in about two seconds and during those seconds Sherlock has time to yearn for things that never were and now never will be.

He never told John that he's the only thing that has managed to give him back lost words.

He'll never again see that expression, that little nod of absolute companionship, that John gave him just now.

He never expected anyone would look at him like that.

He'll never be able to repay the favour. Any of them.

His finger twitches on the trigger and he finds himself thinking that he, in fact, wouldn't have minded going on living. This is nothing short of astounding. He wouldn't have minded the unavoidable fussing by Mrs Hudson. He wouldn't have minded the bleak weeks without cases. He wouldn't have minded even Mycroft's smug superiority, because John's company was always there to back him up. Not doting on him, but steadfastly believing. It had been – good.

No, to his surprise Sherlock wouldn't have minded at all.

–

It's extremely jarring to wholly expect to die and then not to. They take a cab home, just like they would any other night. It almost makes him nauseous. They're both more or less unscathed, and while John has previous combat experience and spends the time in the cab silently breathing and reconstructing himself, staring out of the window at uncaring streets, Sherlock is wholly panicking. 

He let himself think those thoughts. He let himself admit those truths. He can't unthink them, nor erase them. They are a part of him now, such a part as he wished never to have to face. He doesn't know what to do with them. He doesn't know how to cope with them, with himself.

His head is swimming with words he hadn't known this morning.

There was a moment, just a short while ago, when he _desperately_ wanted to tell John, well, everything. When he felt more connected than he had felt in years, maybe in a lifetime. He feels like a kettle ready to boil over, a volcano about to erupt.

He can't stay still.

“Stop squirming, would you?” John gently admonishes him, and that's all it takes, that's how frayed he really is. Sherlock turns on him, his eyes furious. He doesn't know where to start, so he tries to do everything at once.

“Your eyes are blue,” he says, and it comes out an accusation. “Your eyes are blue and you hate crows. You see, I have three lists, except it seems like you just single-handedly destroyed one of them. The only reason we're flatsharing is because Stamford distracted me with a joke about his weight, and Mycroft pays most of the rent anyway. You don't want to be my friend, and that's quite all right, but don't you _ever_ again dare to get kidnapped by psychopaths or try to get their snipers to blow you to smithereens. You gave me colours, and tastes, and the sunset, and it seems like about a hundred other things as well, and I just wish I could give you something back. I hate you so, so much. So there.”

John blinks, then frowns. Opens his mouth, closes it. Opens it again.

“Um,” he says.

“I do want to be your friend,” he says.

“Sebastian,” Sherlock shoots back, immediately, refusing to meet his gaze, to look at his stupid blue eyes.

“Fuck that guy,” John replies promptly.

Sherlock has to ponder this. The thought is fully new and quite unexpected.

“Really? You'd really want – that? Even after all this? It's just that, statistically speaking, I'm not exactly prime friend material with my destructive tendencies and -”

“Shut up, Sherlock,” John says, but he smiles when he says it and Sherlock's confused, so he does.

“Baker Street,” yawns the cabbie.

They go in, together, but before the door closes there comes a loud sound from the roof. John turns to Sherlock with his whole face shining in satisfaction, and says,

“Would you just listen to that! I can hear the crows from here. I hate those birds.”


End file.
